The following days and weeks pass in a heady mix of pain, indolence, and delight. Every day my prince comes to my home and sends Hywel away. For a few hours he is mine. If it is daylight we sit by the fire in my house and talk. If it is nighttime we go out and walk beneath the stars. Slowly my head heals and my strength returns. He courts me as if we were carefree youngsters, and always he is respectful, gentle and proper. He kisses my hand, but no more than this.

This evening has a special beauty about it. The snow has gone and there is a smell of spring in the air. We walk under a full moon so bright it casts sharp-edged shadows. I lead Brynach to the lake and show him the perfect double of the moon that floats upon the water on such nights as this. We sit atop a smooth rock that juts out over the lake and peer down to study our own faces, side by side, slick and darkly mirrored on the silky surface.

‘No copy of you can be as wondrous as you truly are,’ he tells me.

‘I think it is a flattering likeness,’ I disagree. ‘The years have been kinder to me in the lake than out here. But it makes you look sorrowful, my prince.’

‘I am only so when I am away from you, my prophet.’

‘You have your princely duties,’ I say, and neither of us will choose to name these.

‘Would that you could be my princess,’ he says suddenly, a bitterness to his voice that I have not heard before. I put my hand on his.

‘Let us not waste our time together wishing for what can never be. I am content.’

‘I am not!’ He throws a stone into the water and our faces are broken to pieces by the disturbance. He stands, still holding my hand, and leads me back from the shore into the cover of the woodland. An owl swoops by as we slip between the trees. Somewhere near a hedgehog snuffles, newly emerged from its winter sleep. Prince Brynach stops when he comes to the shelter of a mossy oak, pulling me to him in a swift movement, finding my mouth with his. His kisses are deep and taste of passion, of want, of longing. For a moment I do not respond, my mind forbidding me, years of trampling my own desire beneath the heavy tread of duty keeping me from expressing my own desire. But my body acts as if cut loose from my control. I feel my need for my prince’s love burning hotter than a fire of oak, and such heat melts my resistance and my reserve.